“Submundo Luso vs 12transfusons” is a new mix tape that features rappers from Angola, Mozambique, Brazil and Portugal. Released on New Year’s Eve after five months of preparation, the project brought together hip-hop promoters from the blogs Submundo Luso [pt] in Mozambique and 12transfusons [pt] in Angola. The two met online and the former invited the latter to collaborate.
In this interview for the blog Underground Lusófono [pt], Astérix o Néfilim (Astérix the Giant, in English), a rapper, producer and manager at 12transfusons, talks about the effort, which counted the participation of artists from all over the globe and is now available as a free download. He also shares his views on the artistic scene in Cabinda – a tiny province in the north of Angola – and the challenges caused by such isolation.

“This fascinating book looks at hip hop in the Lusophone world. Its authors explore the various aspects of hip hop culture - break dance, graffiti, rap music, and social movements based on this street culture. They scrutinise local cases and examine the multiple links between hip hop on both sides of the Atlantic, such as the new global codes that have developed among Portuguese-speaking young people.”

The album is titled “Ex-Combatentes” (Ex-Combatants), which happens also to be the name of the street he lives on in Luanda, but the music in sound and lyrics has little to do with war. Unless one thinks of war in the widest sense – war with the self, war with family, neighbors, friends, etc.

He makes Angolan music for 40 years, has nearly 500 musical themes recorded and “many miles on the road”. Bonga, whose voice identifies with Angola, has always been attentive to the reality of his country, preserving and disseminating the Semba musical style. He is keen to highlight: “Just like Brazil has Samba and America has Rock, Angola has Semba. It is the music I heard in the cradle”. His musical path was marked by his respect to “origin, tradition and pulse of the Semba”, taking it and spreading it around the world.

While some commentators and journalists have dismissed Occupy Wall Street as carnival, lawmakers and police officers did not miss the point. They reached back to a mid-nineteenth century ban on masking to arrest occupiers wearing as little as a folded bandana on the forehead, leaving little doubt about their fear of Carnival as a potent form of political protest. New York Times journalist Ginia Bellafante initially expressed skepticism about 'air[ing] societal grievance as carnival,' but just a few days later she warned against 'criminalizing costume,' thus changing her condescension to caution as she confirmed the police’s point: masking can be dangerous, Carnival is serious business.

We are at the Batida workshop. A space in a garages complex in Lisbon. On the outside it’s just that. A building with nothing that distinguishes it from the others. Inside there is Pedro Coquenão, or DJ Mpula, or the man who invented Batida. Inside there, this 37-year-old Portuguese man born in Huambo (Angola), which he left with the onset of civil war, an Angolan living in Portugal since then, talks non-stop about all that Batida means. We could even say that we do not need to hear everything he is saying. The speakers release South African music. Scattered throughout the space we see a marimba, extemporary drums took out from diesel cans, Angolan beer “Cuca” bars, photos of Coquenão’s travels to Luanda, and drums that, in concert, will be illuminated from the inside as efficient do-it-yourself scenery. All this is Batida.

This article explores the role of Kuduro, the popular Angolan electronic music and dance style in the process of updating the national Angolan identity called angolanidade to the conditions of the new millennium.

South Africa´s theatre gains international recognition for its performance arts productions due to applying diverse aesthetics and the search of new stage approaches by many different artists. In addition, regularly scheduled national and international dance, performance art and theater festivals are organized like Invecting the City in Cape Town, Dance Umbrella in Johannesburg, and National Arts Festival in Grahams Town etc.

The most interesting things happen often completely unexpected. On a trip to Nairobi, being busy with the Solo and Duo Festival of Dance Forum Nairobi I came along the dynamics of inspiring artists in the GoDown Art Centre located in the industrial area of town. There I had the coincidental chance to meet the dancer Irene Karanja in a daily rehearsal program for a dance show choreographed by Fernando Anuang´a. Her artist name is short: Renée.

The stage and the auditorium are darkened. Suddenly a noise of clinking glasses in the audience is to hear. The stage light is slowly moved in, it remains dimmed considerably. The room is bare, dark and corresponds to a black box theatre. One can see a mountain of white cups on the right half of the stage.

"I think there are so many misconceptions about African cultures. Besides, I use the ideas of used objects for rituals, but the material is different. Sometimes I abstract additionally the movements of such rituals. Anyway, I feel the need to alienate ritual elements; they mainly serve as an inspiration for me".

Multiple award-winning dancer, choreographer, teacher and development activist Mamela Nyamza, the 2011 Standard Bank Young Artist Award Winner for Dance, started using dance to translate the world around her as a child growing up in Gugulethu in the 1980s.

The solo violin playing of Isaac Molelekoa is so impressive, melancholic and space pervading that the viewers are dispelled. Extremely slow a dancer becomes visible, who stands in a narrow cone of light in the center of the stage. It is a quiet, strong and contrastive picture - this disturbing music of the violinist, that encourages you to move either internally or externally, and the continued structural integrity of the dancer Maqoma on stage.

It’s 1943 and Benguela is thriving. As the famous railway heads inland, the town readies itself for a make-over: there is a modern development plan afoot. Progress is the watchword. In one of its streets, an important event is about to occur: Dona Ludovina (a singer of some style, they say), the wife of Sebastião José da Costa, an employee at the Post Office and a former journalist, is about to give birth to a child she will call Carlos Lamartine. Benguela waits, with open arms, to welcome a great son, one who will be a major figure in Angolan music and the author of timeless melodies.

The saucepan lids turned like records on an imaginary pick-up. If you closed your eyes, you could hear the sounds reverberating everywhere. Then came the sessions when other rhythms were played - mornas and coladeras on the guitar of a cousin who “sort of lived in the house.” The gramophones and the radios had also been sort of living there for a long time. But that was at the start. Aftyer that there was going to be the Clube Marítimo Africano, the final year parties, the focus on a big new star and then recognition as a major figure in Angolan music: Filipe Zau.

He sings the sounds of the earth, though it was the Beatles who woke everyone up to the range of melodies that are to be found in the musical scale. Filipe Mukenga’s career has been acknowledged both at home and abroad and is part of the generation that saw an explosion of music in Angola during the 60’s and 70’s.

She lives now in France, where she founded the association for Angolan artists resident there. Her companion is a Croatian musician who also “does a touch of painting.” Whenever there’s a chance, she’s up on stage. And there’s no better end than her own words: “every time I sing, I live the moment with the same amazement as the butterfly on the only day of its life, perched on the coloured petal of a flower.”

Musseque residents would likely have said, “my suffering, yes, but ours as well.”
Music, in late colonial Angola took private grief and by performing it publicly made it collective. The sound, and perhaps even the process, was attractive to whites as well and in an ironic twist on the lusotropical narrative, by the early 1970s, whites made their way to the musseques in sizeable numbers to hear Ngola Ritmos and other popular bands play.

Tchiloli is a story of blood and justice that the local people have made their own. They have turned it into a way to raise their voices against opression but also to retie their links with their African ancestors. Behind the colourful spectacle there is a hidden invocation to their ancestors, in references to a cult that was forbidden under colonial rule. Defeat comes, but there emerges an identity in territory that the first players could take for their own as a means of survival.